Kingdom’s Return is a Charming Exploration Game and Luckily It’s Short
Kingdom’s Return is a recent game released by INTI Creates that mixes city building, exploration, and RPG elements. In the game, you collect materials in 2D side-scrolling action stages and then use these resources to rebuild your city and strengthen your characters.
Action and strategy gameplay in Kingdom’s Return
Kingdom’s Return combines two main gameplay styles: 2D dungeon exploration and strategic kingdom management focused on rebuilding the kingdom by placing buildings, roads, and more.
However, to rebuild the kingdom as shown in the screenshot above, you need materials and money, which you only obtain by accepting missions and exploring the regions around the kingdom, which are filled with monsters.
When accepting a mission, I recommend focusing only on it, because I used to accept missions and just go exploring, ending up dying and returning to the kingdom without completing anything. You actually gain resources much faster by completing missions than by wandering around exploring aimlessly.
Kingdom building and character progression
In Kingdom’s Return, every building constructed in the kingdom directly influences the power of the characters used in adventures.
As the kingdom grows, heroes also become stronger, creating a constant progression between exploration and development.
You can choose any character to control and explore the map, but I confess that so far I’ve only been playing with the knight, because she’s the cutest and the one I liked the most.
Each class has unique attributes, skills, and combat styles, allowing different ways to play. When you level up, you gain a certain number of points to use in the screen above, where you unlock more abilities.
The game’s idea is to rebuild the kingdom, and as I mentioned, you can customize it by placing buildings wherever you want, but this system is quite limited to be honest. I already know this is a short game (yes, Kingdom’s Return is short — I haven’t finished it yet, but the average playtime seems to be around 10 hours), so there isn’t that much customization.
Exploration is fun, but very limited. Basically, you enter a map, defeat all enemies, and that’s it. You really need to kill all monsters in the current map to progress to the next one.
To be completely honest, the game could have been much better, but it is simple. At least it’s short and can entertain you in a light way.
The characters are cute, and Kingdom’s Return is available on Steam here.